What I'm Reading: Nikki Crutchley on the rise of the 'whydunnit'

Nikki Crutchley

Nikki Crutchley tells Eleanor Black what she's reading

Since my mid-teens I have existed on a diet of crime: police procedurals, psychological thrillers, mysteries, true crime. I read what I write and love it: Kiwi, Australian, UK, Scandinavian, US — I'll take it any way it comes.

Crime writing for me, especially by New Zealand authors, is getting better and more varied every year. It is no longer the simple whodunnit. It is now the whodunnit that's backed up by a believable "whydunnit" — that satisfying explanation (or working out) of why that character did what they did. And it's even more than that. Crime writers today are writing novels that not only thrill but are also a snapshot of society. They shine a light on cities and towns and the people that inhabit them: rich, poor, different races, different cultures, good and bad and the grey area in between. These novels often incorporate the issues of the day and give us characters we in turn adore or loathe or fill us with terror.

You only need to look at past finalists for the Ngaio Marsh Awards for an indication of what to read (Nathan Blackwell, Vanda Symon, Paul Cleave, Alan Carter, Paddy Richardson, Fiona Sussman, Charity Norman, Jennifer Lane — the list really does go on).

J.P. Pomare's In the Clearing is a finalist in this year's Ngaio Marsh Awards (his debut, Call Me Evie, won best first novel in the same awards last year) and it's not hard to see why. In the Clearing ticked all the boxes for me: crime, based on a true story, an expert twist I didn't see coming and an ending that left me with chills and the need to find out more about the real life Australian cult "The Family", which the book was based on.

Rosetta Allan's Purgatory is based on the 1865 Ōtāhuhu murders, told from the perspective of two very different people — one of them the ghost of 10-year-old John Finnegan, a murder victim, which gave the story a whole new dimension. The book is beautifully haunting and an informative view into New Zealand in the 1860s.

However, I often happily veer off the crime fiction path as I've done for my last two reads: The Telling Time by Kiwi author P.J. McKay tells the story of two women — one from 1950s Yugoslavia and one from 1980s New Zealand. It deals with trauma, family secrets, and relationships. The characters and settings from this book have stayed with me.
I only read The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood after falling in love with the TV series (and thus ignoring my rule that any book made into a TV show or movie must first be read). I now know why this book has enjoyed such longevity — the writing, the premise, the characters — and its prophetic storyline was the perfect book to read in a year that, so far, beggars belief.

The Murder Club, by Nikki Crutchley

Nikki Crutchley's new thriller, The Murder Club ($35) is out now. She appears at the Escape! festival in Tauranga on October 17 and 18. See taurangafestival.co.nz